| Biography | The UK's Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (19171918) was later named Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps (19181920). Over 57,000 women served between January 1917 and November 1918. On 31 March 1917 women in the WAAC were first sent to the battlefields in France, just 14 cooks and waitresses. Helen Gwynne-Vaughan was the Senior Officer overseas, and Florence Leach was the controller of the cooks. The corps was disbanded in September 1921.
After a German air raid in September 1940 most of the service records did not survive. Those which did have suffered fire, water and mould damage. The National Archives in Kew, Surrey, digitised these to prevent further damage and they can be searched and viewed online. The last WAAC veteran was Ivy Lillian Campany, who died in 2008.
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